For making particular masonry works such as, for example, walls for retaining slopes and gradients at the side of roads, motorways, railways or the like, or the walls for creating drops between different urban levels, the use is known of different types of prefabricated building elements.
Such elements usually consist of beamed structures of considerable size made using concrete castings which, during wall building, are placed one at the top of the other and are then filled with filling material such as earth, sand, gravel, etc. The resulting wall is very stable and strong but can be further enhanced in this sense by using particular retention systems that permit joining the building elements the one to the other, or fastening these to the filling material and/or directly to a slope to be retained.
A first type of building elements consists in the association of a pair of longitudinal beams, substantially horizontal, with a pair of cross beams, which join together the longitudinal beams and define the supporting bases of the building element, permitting this to be rested on the ground or on another building element. In assembly configuration, the building elements are positioned so that the longitudinal beams are arranged parallel to the plane position of the wall to be built, with one of them facing outwards, while the other is arranged on the inner side of the wall.
The longitudinal beams are fitted on the top part of the cross beams and consequently, once the building elements have been installed, the filling material emerges on the outside between the cross beams and the outer longitudinal beam. In this first type of building elements then the filling material can act as fertile soil for growing plants such as grass, flowers or the like.
In a second type of building elements, on the other hand, the beamed structures have a side closed by a substantially vertical panel, from the inner face of which two cross beams extend which at the opposite end are connected together by a horizontal beam parallel with the panel.
The horizontal beam is arranged at the top of the cross beams, approximately at the same height as the top edge of the panel.
In assembly configuration the building elements are positioned with the horizontal beams on the inner side of the wall and the panels turned outwards and adjacent to one another; the resulting wall thus shows a substantially continuous outer surface from which the filling material does not come to the surface.
These building elements, though particularly strong, are susceptible to further upgrading aimed at making the production process easier and making them more practical to use during wall building.
In this respect in fact, it should be remembered that the shape of the known building elements results in their usually being formed inside voluminous shaped forms closed at the bottom, which are filled with fresh concrete and from which the element is removed by lifting once the cement has achieved a sufficient degree of strength and rigidity.
Before being able to lift building elements of such shapes and dimensions however, to avoid breakages, cracks or distortions the cement must solidify completely inside the form and this requires a particularly long time; the equipment for forming the traditional building elements therefore remains in use for a long time and permits making a limited number of elements each day, generally slowing down the production process and resulting in particularly high production costs.
It must also be emphasised that during the building of the wall, the filling material for covering the building elements must be compacted every time the elements are arranged the one on the other.
The compacting of the filling material is usually done by means of a compacting unit that pushes the filling material inside the beamed structures, pressing this down; this operation however is usually rather complicated because the compacting unit must be introduced from above between the beams and the panel, if provided, of the building elements, and the use is therefore necessary of a lift/excavator to raise the compacting unit above the beamed structure.
The main aim of the present invention is to achieve the aforementioned upgrading by providing a building element for building walls filled with filling material, particularly earth or the like, that can be manufactured in a practical and easy way, quickly and with relatively low production costs.
Another object of the present invention is to simplify the building of the wall, in particular making easier the assembly operations of one building element on the other and the covering operation with filling material.